The Battle For Wikipedia's Soul

njondet recommends an article at The Economist that sheds light on the identity crisis faced by Wikipedia as it is torn between two alternative futures. "'It can either strive to encompass every aspect of human knowledge, no matter how trivial; or it can adopt a more stringent editorial policy and ban articles on trivial subjects, in the hope that this will enhance its reputation as a trustworthy and credible reference source. These two conflicting visions are at the heart of a bitter struggle inside Wikipedia between 'inclusionists,' who believe that applying strict editorial criteria will dampen contributors' enthusiasm for the project, and 'deletionists' who argue that Wikipedia should be more cautious and selective about its entries."

Wikipedia as Advertising

Personally I get annoyed when I see a comment in a Wikipedia article which was obviously added by someone promoting some product, or some stupid viral video attempt they posted on youtube which was peripherally related to the article in question. I feel that deletion of these kind of trivial things is important to maintain the integrity of Wikipedia. Sure, it could strive to be a record of all human knowledge... but then, some humans have some pretty useless "knowledge" which I don't really want to read about.

Re:Wikipedia as Advertising

Just delete the blatant advertising.

Re:Wikipedia as Advertising

I agree with that, but I've seen a lot of interesting pages that get deleted just for the sake of "Oh, it's not of interest to a wide enough audience" etc. That's absurd - it's not as if each new page costs a significant amount of money to maintain, and who is in a position to decide that anyway? Besides, look at how many pages on obscure sci-fi characters there are, and then tell me that's of relevance to a wide audience...

If it's advertising or devoid of information, delete. Otherwise, live and let live - surely more information has to be better.

Re:Wikipedia as Advertising

The thing is, most new articles began "devoid of information" - or, in WP terminology, a stub. If that stub is sourced, it usually stays, if it's not it goes. Articles don't pop into existence in a full state of being, so the line between delete and keep is much more fluid.

Re:Wikipedia as Advertising

And also, how do you determine what is "trivial" and what isn't? I am all for the inclusion of every bit of human knowledge.

Why can't it be both?

A few years ago, no one imagined that we'd have accomplished what we did here on Wikipedia. Compared to the entrenched encyclopedia companies, we were far behind, and we always knew the climb would be steep. But in record numbers of entries, we came out and wrote so many articles. And with these articles and discussions, it was made clear that at this moment - in this fight for intellectual freedom - there is something happening on the Web.

There is something happening when men and men pretending to be women in Des Moines and Davenport; in Lebanon and Concord come out of their basements to write and rewrite and edit and correct because they believe in what this medium can be. We can be the new majority who can lead this world out of a long intellectual property darkness - Communists, Free-marketeers, and Furries who are tired of the high prices of Britannica and the inadequacy of Funk and Wagnalls; who know that we can disagree without being disagreeable; who understand that if we mobilize our voices to challenge the money and influence that's stood in our way to knowledge and challenge ourselves to reach for something better, there's no obscure minutia we can't illuminate - no minor character we cannot flesh out.

Our new Web encyclopedia can end the outrage of unaffordable, unavailable encyclopedias in our time. We can bring doctors and patients; workers and businesses, Democrats and Republicans together for discussion and consultation; and we can tell the big name encyclopedia players that while they'll get a seat at the table, they don't get to buy every chair. Not this time. Not now.

All of the inclusionists and the deletists on this site share these goals. All have good ideas. And all are valuable contributors who serve this website honorably. But the reason Wikipedia has always been different is because it's not just about what I or they will do, it's also about what you, the people who love knowledge, can do to increase it.

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics who will only grow louder and more dissonant in the years to come. We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of the world false hope and bad information. But in the unlikely story that is Wikipedia, there has never been anything false about participation. For when we have faced down increasing attacks on our credibility; when we've been told that we're not a valid source, or that we shouldn't even try to be the be all and end all, or that we can't, thousands upon thousands of Wikipedia authors have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a free and liberated people.

Yes we can.

False dilemma (was Re:Why can't it be both?)

I don't see the reason why Wikipedia cannot document every trivial human knowledge and still be a trustworthy and credible reference source.

Well I guess I'm an inclusionist then...

Because I really like the trivial and sometimes weird articles on Wikipedia. I like the articles that probably would not make it into any other resource.

Re:Well I guess I'm an inclusionist then...

I have to agree. I often explicitly search wikipedia for reasonably structured information on neo-culture subjects like characters in TV shows, books or cartoons.

Much of wikipedias usefulness stems from it's inclusivity; if any given subject had to have a related doctorate, we'd have to wait 50 years until academia decides to catch up.

Trivial is relative

That which may be trivial today could end up being very important in the long run. Vincent Van Gogh only sold one single painting in his lifetime, as he simply wasn't very popular. If we leave out articles on certain people or events based on our perceptions of their current importance, that information could be lost forever. Let history judge what is or is not trivial, we're just too biased to do so in the present. I'm a fan for inclusion, all the way.

Re:Trivial is relative

Not only that, what could be "trivial" for one people is really informative for others. There is some knowledge that does not "belong" to other sections in an article. This is knowledge that may not be large enough to fill a paragraph but is still information. Even if this information is that X character in a movie was based on Y or took some lines from Z. To some people that might look trivial but other people might find it useful for a research of say, the influence of "oldies" 1990s movies in the new 2050 movies.

Moreover, I do not find "trivial" and "trustworthy" as conflicting approaches. You can have a very trustworthy place with Trivia (like your typical neighbour woman who knows about *everything* that happens in the neighbourhood, you know her information is trustworthy, although some of it may be trivial). I think what they should be aiming for is to improve the quality of those articles that seem "trivial". Yes, even the thousand of Anime/Manga articles, they are not tririval, they are information.

Deletionists

I guess I fall under the "inclusionist" type as I wholeheartedly believe that
nuking the content in a favor of a formal compliance with a policy du jour
is a wrong thing to do. Deleting is easy, creating is hard. And re-creating
is nearly impossible. If you tried resurrecting a deleted Wikipedia article,
you know what I mean.

Re:Deletionists

Verifiable reliable secondary sourcing isn't exactly a "policy du jour" on Wikipedia, and it's generally the best way to determine the notability of a subject. Easily the most frequently deleted types of articles are spam/advocacy articles, self-bios, and articles about garage bands. In all three cases, the articles are often placed in hopes of increasing the fame of the author/subject, and in all three cases, sources are rarely if ever provided, hence the articles' eventual removal.

If you have an article topic that is well-researched and well-sourced, by which I mean the subject has received attention in reliable mainstream media, then write the article and cite the sources. But just remember that you don't own that article, and it will be ultimately judged by the Wikipedia community to determine its suitability for inclusion (or modification, merging with another article, etc.).

Very, very old news

This is being reported as if it's a new thing. It's not. Far from it. I've been at Wikipedia for nearly 5 years now, and this debate has been raging as long as I've been there. In 2003/2004, it centered around high schoolers. By 2005/2006, it was individual Pokemon and TV shows. Now it's individual TV episodes and characters thereof.

What's the deletionist justification?

I can understand why someone might want lots of strange and "trivial" articles on Wikipedia. They want it to be a resource that they can always turn to for pretty much any and all information.

Why do the deletionists care if there are trivial articles on there? If they consider an article trivial, isn't it fairly easy to just not read it and not contribute to it?

Do they base their stance purely on how "trivial articles" may affect Wikipedia's public image, or do they have some sort of technical concern about having too many articles?

Re:What's the deletionist justification?

More of a social concern about having too many articles; monitoring articles takes time, and having articles on topics that they consider worthless, but that still need to be monitored, causes the amount of eyes watching each article to decrease. This allows, in theory, more vandalism to sneak by, and decreases the average quality of Wikipedia articles, or so I've heard

You may want to read the Deletionism page on Metawiki [wikimedia.org] for more info.

Re:What's the deletionist justification?

The justification is as follows: an encyclopedia is a generalized collection of information for easy brushing up on a subject or to begin research. It's a giant summary of what other people say. Because WP decided to use the encyclopedia template, all those weird trivial articles that nobody reports on in media deserve the hatchet. Had it not and been a collection of everything, they would have a home, but then you have to deal with a bunch of people creating articles on their friends discussing how gay they are with no reason for deletion (similar to Everything2).

It's not based on technical reasons, nor on "trivia" - if Bob's Local Cheese Statue was discussed in the newspaper a bunch of times, and that's cited in the article, that article will definitely stay. It's more based on "can you back this up using a real source, not yourself", to both preserve reliability and make sure that if someone wants to use it for research they can figure out who said what.

Re:What's the deletionist justification?

Do they base their stance purely on how "trivial articles" may affect Wikipedia's public image, or do they have some sort of technical concern about having too many articles?

I suspect that the main reason is a lot less noble: "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and petty power corrupts completely out of proportion to the actual power." Destroying someone else's work is using power, and that is a rewarding activity in itself, so people with nothing to contribute do so to make themselves feel important.

That's why I've made a principal decision to never again contribute to Wikipedia: doing so would mean engaging in petty power games with deletionists and other control freaks, so why bother ?

I'm definitely in the inclusionist's camp

What makes wikipedia worthwhile is the amount of information available. Wikipedia credibility isn't in peril because it contains TNG episode descriptions (and it does). It's in peril because it contains inaccurate information. The one time I corrected wikipedia was the removal of some disguised claims to perpetual motion. The information had a few web page citations backing it up. I followed the links, because what they were saying intrigued me, and ended up at some crackpot's website. So I deleted that information. If it had been wrong on star trek related information, it would still be unreliable. If it didn't have any star trek information, it would still be providing wrong information on that topic.

What that tells you is that the current system works. Any encyclopedia works like that. I wasn't allowed to cite hard-copy encyclopedias when I was doing projects in school, they were meant as a starting point to gather information. Same thing I do with wikipedia. When I want quick information, I go there (and I go there quite often). If I need the extra reliability, I may look at the papers cited at wikipedia and decide if they're good reputable starting points, or go elsewhere.

Wikipedia is tremendously useful if you use it as an encyclopedia is meant to be used. A repository of tons of information for quick reference. If editors continue doing a good job requiring citation sources and checking for accuracy of information on topics they understand, it will continue to grow. If editors start removing information because "it's not worthy" I'm going to have to start going elsewhere for that information and they've accomplished nothing to increase their reputation.

Why can't it be both?

In reality, Wikipedia is too large to have cohesive policy of this type. Rather, it is very fragmented with a large number of groups and projects, each with its own standards of quality, reliability and notability. In Mathematics, Wikipedia has become the de-facto first reference for definitions. I wouldn't use it for research results, but if you need to know what a contravariant functor [wikipedia.org] is, or the basic construction of Hausdorff measure [wikipedia.org] then starting at Wikipedia works. The same holds for some fields of theoretical physics. And this is perfectly compatible with there being large swathes of the encyclopedia devoted to debating the special power sof minor characters in little-known Japanese manga, written using in-universe language. The point is that most users can easily tell the difference between the two kinds of pages.

Trivial is a matter of opinion

Just because some random people determine something is "trival" doesn't mean it is.

There are a lot of things that are marked as such, that I don't think they are. Episode lists of TV shows for instance. Watch a show, want to know what season it was in, Wikipedia can tell you...at least for now.

I've always considered that the whole IDEA of Wikipedia. A site with every meaningful and meaningless piece of information you want. You need to know the particulars of the 1980 Presidential election? Wikipedia. You want to know the in-depth backstory of G-Man in Half Life? Wikipedia will tell you that as well. The latter may be called trivial by some, but I'm sure a lot of people have read it as well.

The fact that there ARE all these types of pages mean two things. People want to write them, and people want to read them. If wikipedia starts to delete them, there will be another wiki that will host them.

Slashdotters are mostly inclusionists?

And if so, why?

I'm all for including every little piece of info as long as it's possible to organize, and right now it seems to stay quite stable having all kinds of "minimalistic" pieces of data.

However, what called my attention upon entering the commentaries is that most people here were "inclusionists". Is it the aversion to censorship? The interest in unpopular areas of human knowledge?

I think a poll about this in Slashdot would be interesting.

Surely there must be some compromise.

If only there was some way to include the "trivial" information yet not see it unless specifically looking for it. Maybe if there was some sort of ranking system that could be used to filter what information was deemed trivial, like a score or rating system. Possibly even some kind of description tags to aid in this, like "insightful", "funny", "interesting", or "troll". Then those who were not interested in the trivial information could browse at a higher filter level, and those who were searching for it could still find it when desired.

Nah that would never work.

Label, don't regulate

If the community decides that a page isn't notable, just label it thus and move on. There's no reason to delete the page.

The same thing goes for page locking: although there are still some extreme cases where pages need to be locked, many of the reliability problems would be mitigated by labelling recently-changed parts or frequently-changed parts of pages. Readers can then take responsibility for their own level of trust.

Both cases are about matching expectations to reality: the situation can be improved by changing the content OR by making expectations more accurate.

Re:deletionists

Excellent. It took fewer than 20 comments to go from "interesting discussion of an important if abstract philosophical difference" to "ad hominem attack on anyone who disagrees with me". No wonder human discourse is so rarefied and refined these days!

"And furthermore, you're ugly!" Yeah, that rhetorical flourish really adds to the logical cohesion of a point.